Coming expansion will add new romance options, but only on planet Makeb.

Share this story

Given the notable freedom of sexual orientation that players can enjoy in previous BioWare games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, it was always a bit odd that the company's Star Wars-themed MMO, The Old Republic, strictly limited characters to relationships with opposite-gendered characters. The developer is planning to fix that situation with March's Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, but same-sex character relationship partners will be limited to certain computer-controlled characters on a single in-game planet.

Same-gender relationships (SGRs) have been a commonly requested feature in TOR since its launch late in 2011, and executive producer Jeff Hickman apologized in a recent blog post that it is "taking so long to get in the game." But despite earlier promises that such relationships would be possible with the "companion characters" that serve as semi-permanent sidekicks for players, Hickman noted the feature will initially be available only "with some NPCs on Makeb."

Bioware and EA refused a request for further comment on the matter, but Hickman's post suggests that technical difficulties and the amount of work needed to retrofit existing characters for SGRs are to blame for the feature not being more widespread initially. Back in June, former TOR community manager Stephen Reid said that same-gender relationships were pushed from a launch feature to a post-launch addition because of "the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size."

Back then, Reid promised "the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options," but Hickman's recent announcement suggested adding SGR options to those fully voiced and animated companions would "take a lot more work than we realized at the time." That work has been put off, Hickman suggested, so the team could focus on making tweaks necessary to make the game free to play.

Hickman's post makes it clear that "allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of," and that the development team does "intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future." Still, segregating gay characters to a specific planet doesn't look good, whatever the technical reason behind it. Relegating SGRs to one small corner of the massive Old Republic universe comes off as a kind of "separate but equal" half-measure treatment of the issue that might actually be worse than having no SGRs at all. As Bioware co-founder Ray Muyzka said in an interview last February, same-sex relationships should be "part of the expectation of a role-playing game, [and] part of the expectation of a BioWare game."

The player base, predictably, is heavily split on whether the recent decision goes too far or doesn't go far enough. A community forum thread for players stating "I do not agree with the inclusion of SGRs" has garnered 48 pages of responses in just a few days. Other threads lay out detailed suggestions for even more romance options. A year-old thread discussing the possibility of SGRs in the game now has over 5,000 posts encompassing practically every possible view on the issue. The one thing both sides seem to be able to agree on is that they aren't exactly satisfied with how Bioware is handling the introduction at this point.

Promoted Comments

Kinda saw this coming. It can't be easy programing all of the contingencies for a game where absolutely everything has to be voice acted.

The logistics of one-line voice acting in most games is fairly complex as it is. But here you also have to remember that they're programming in dialogue for every class, and every companion, and every quest and npc in the game. And with every conversation with every one of those characters where every dialogue wheel has three different choices, and three different responses, and in many cases multiple different ways the dialogue and quests progress from there.

And then in the cases of returning characters, you have to (ideally) dredge up every one of the voice actors that previously voiced those characters. God help you if the voice actor doesn't want to do it(or isn't even alive anymore...).

Programming TOR to begin with was pretty revolutionary, but my god it has to be nightmarish to add content to.

I can't be the only one that actively tries to achieve every possible relationship option in one playthrough in a BioWare game and giggle maniacally at the results as my character opens his/her legs for every single breathing entity in the game universe.

Share this story

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

It seems that any technical issues could be resolved by being a little bit more gender-neutral, no? The line "I love you, too." seems pretty gender-neutral, and is actually more effort in terms of voice-acting to make it gender-specific.

It seems that any technical issues could be resolved by being a little bit more gender-neutral, no? The line "I love you, too." seems pretty gender-neutral, and is actually more effort in terms of voice-acting to make it gender-specific.

Maybe, theoretically, but most of the voice acting for the original game was completed years ago at this point. There would be a lot of little changes needed, and I can't see it being worth the massive cost. If they are going to bring in the whole cast for a voice session, they get way more benefit (for all players) by having them record stuff for new content.

Explain Blizzard supporting both Mac and PC from day 1 w/all their software? Clearly it's been worth it for them. BioWare gave users the "install Windows in Boot Camp" runaround until January last year when they said it was their next big priority. Then no word has ever been spoken again. Car analogies fail BTW. There is no reason my Mac can't play TOR, it's system stats are perfectly in line with the game's requirements. The engine that Bioware uses was supposed to be gaining Mac compatibility last year in 1st quarter. Feel free to look down your nose at someone who willingly left Windows behind, but there are plenty of companies who see the benefit to having software on both OSes. Hell, most Bioware games are available on both platforms, but not TOR. It isn't even like they'd have to do a full conversion, it's all a wrapper around the engine. So it's just system hooks that are different basically.

Also, remember that the pre-cursor to Halo was Marathon, which was Mac only. If MS hadn't bought Bungie it would have been a Mac game. SHOCK! Games on a Mac! Oh noes!!

How easy or hard it is to make a game Mac-compatible depends on a lot of things, especially the game engine. Your statement about it being (by the sound of how you phrased it) essentially the same thing as a wrapper for a video file is ignorant. BioWare has never used the Hero engine before. Regardless of what was done in the past, you can't expect all popular titles to be available on Mac. See my previous minivan comparison. In regards to Marathon being a precursor to Halo; sure, but there's no Marathon without Wolfenstein 3D, Hexen, and Doom. Stop trying to make Macs out to be some O.G. gaming platform.

I continue to not really understand the controversy or need for SGRs in SWTOR. It's not a dating simulator, the romantic relationships in the game don't get you anything more than a few extra side-conversations and some flirty in-game mail. There aren't even any Mass Effect style blurry sex scenes. If you really want romantic relationships of any kind, this is not the game for it.

As far as adding in SGRs specifically, it's easy to see why they did it this way. They aren't adding any new companions in the near future (they just added an HK droid a couple of months ago), and retrofitting the old companions to be able to turn gay would be a ton of work, as well as presenting disturbing problems. Should they make one of each of the classes companions gay for each sex? What if that doesn't fit the character? These companions are pretty well fleshed out, and having some of them turn gay would be out of character, not to mention advance the idea that being gay is a choice, which is not what I think most of the people wanting SGRs would want. The only reasonable course of action is to add SGRs in new content. Since there aren't new companions coming up, that means an NPC on Makeb. It's the only reasonable way to get it in the game at all.

Privilege.

If it's there for straight relationships it's important enough to be there for not-straight relationships.

That said, I'm not upset that they're not adding more options to old content. The technical reasons for that make sense (though don't excuse not including lgbt* friendly options from the start).

Of course, I thought the game was a train wreck of crap MMO tropes so I don't really have a horse in this race at all.

Explain Blizzard supporting both Mac and PC from day 1 w/all their software? Clearly it's been worth it for them. BioWare gave users the "install Windows in Boot Camp" runaround until January last year when they said it was their next big priority. Then no word has ever been spoken again. Car analogies fail BTW. There is no reason my Mac can't play TOR, it's system stats are perfectly in line with the game's requirements. The engine that Bioware uses was supposed to be gaining Mac compatibility last year in 1st quarter. Feel free to look down your nose at someone who willingly left Windows behind, but there are plenty of companies who see the benefit to having software on both OSes. Hell, most Bioware games are available on both platforms, but not TOR. It isn't even like they'd have to do a full conversion, it's all a wrapper around the engine. So it's just system hooks that are different basically.

Also, remember that the pre-cursor to Halo was Marathon, which was Mac only. If MS hadn't bought Bungie it would have been a Mac game. SHOCK! Games on a Mac! Oh noes!!

How easy or hard it is to make a game Mac-compatible depends on a lot of things, especially the game engine. Your statement about it being (by the sound of how you phrased it) essentially the same thing as a wrapper for a video file is ignorant. BioWare has never used the Hero engine before. Regardless of what was done in the past, you can't expect all popular titles to be available on Mac. See my previous minivan comparison. In regards to Marathon being a precursor to Halo; sure, but there's no Marathon without Wolfenstein 3D, Hexen, and Doom. Stop trying to make Macs out to be some O.G. gaming platform.

The game engine (Hero Engine) supports OpenGL. The server infrastructure runs on Linux and there is a Linux build system.

Hero Engine was supposed to ship Mac and Linux clients last October. I didn't check if they did, but it shouldn't be impossible for SWTOR to support it if the engine they license supports it.

Your character is not you. They have a past before you started "playing" them, they speak in their own voice, and while you nudge them in a direction, they speak their own words, not the ones you chose. On top of that, it's a SW game about a galactic war, not a dating simulator.

If the new expansion contained only gay relationships - to balance things out - would straight players be OK with that?

Romantic options in the game are barely there. This is a minor footnote in the game.

If that's the case, a minor footnote can be easily amended.

Since the game is fully voiced and every NPC interaction is animated/blocked, that isn't the case. Even if it is a couple dozen NPCs, you have to bring back the original voice actors and add new recordings. And since the game is localized in other languages, you do those voice recordings in multiple languages. The dialogue needs to reference multiple classes and alignments. This is a very dialogue-heavy game.

For a game that lost money and led to layoffs, that is a tall-order to justify for all the old content. Adding SGR for new NPCs seemed like a fair compromise.

I don't really see the benefit to Bioware for supporting OSX, not when there are so many things that need their attention, as well as new content needing to be produced, and anyone running a mac has the option to bootcamp Windows if they really wanna play. Plus they have even less incentive to listen to players already playing, since well...you're already playing, in some cases paying (or being subsidized by the whales).

I was excited to play this game for years, until all the little issues started coming to light and the writing was on the wall...things like lack of swimming, crappy single player arcade style space combat, over reliance on instancing and phasing, Bioware butchering the unfinished Hero Engine (even if the hero engine gets osx/linux support doesn't mean Biowares bastardised version of it will get the same support), terrible crafting system, etc. Maybe not issues most people had, but they were enough to keep my 50 bucks in my pocket where it belonged. Turned out to be the best gaming related decision I made in years.

Bioware made the right call ignoring OSX in favor of fixing their broken game and taking it f2p.

I agree with those saying (all) romance should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Bioware is making new content for SWTOR. This new content will have SGRA. This new content is largely all on a new planet. Bioware found it was more work than they expected to put in SGRA with new companions, so they've put in this in the meantime. This after the game failed to live up to performance expectations and after layoffs and a massive change in the direction of the game.

So the way to interpret this is to use the headline "Old Republic to segregate same-gender relationships to a single planet". "Segregation"? Really? There are a bunch of heterosexual relationships in the game that are confined to single planets only. Would it *really* be preferable for them to just give the SGRA crowd nothing at all instead and continue ignoring them?

If the new planet was only for gay players and they were kept separate from the rest of the community, that would be segregation. The new planet is for all players and adds SGR.

It probably doesn't feel like segregation if you're straight - as, indeed, no one's keeping you from the new planet and relationships aren't gay-only there. But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

"We're only allowing SGRs on one planet, as a matter of policy" == segregation.

"We just updated the game and some new features are available on one planet, including SGRs. Given the complexity, we don't have the resources right now to make SGRs possible gamewide, but we plan to in the future" != segregation.

If the new expansion contained only gay relationships - to balance things out - would straight players be OK with that?

That assumes it's something that needs to be "balanced out", which it most certainly is not. That would be like going back and rewriting old books to include gay characters when there were none before, it's ridiculous. If from the beginning, some of the characters had been gay then I would have no problem with that, but you can't just change the story mid-stream to fit a political agenda. The game is not about romantic relationships, and they really shouldn't be a sticking point one way or another at all.

Quote:

Of course, I thought the game was a train wreck of crap MMO tropes so I don't really have a horse in this race at all.

It's a great MMO, if you like MMOs and Bioware games. If that sounds like you then you should try it, it's F2P now, if not, then there are plenty of other games.

Quote:

Hero Engine was supposed to ship Mac and Linux clients last October. I didn't check if they did, but it shouldn't be impossible for SWTOR to support it if the engine they license supports it.

Even if they could just flip it on (and it's never that easy), I don't know if it would be worth the support costs. Most gamers have a Windows partition, or they won't be playing many games.

Kinda saw this coming. It can't be easy programing all of the contingencies for a game where absolutely everything has to be voice acted.

The logistics of one-line voice acting in most games is fairly complex as it is. But here you also have to remember that they're programming in dialogue for every class, and every companion, and every quest and npc in the game. And with every conversation with every one of those characters where every dialogue wheel has three different choices, and three different responses, and in many cases multiple different ways the dialogue and quests progress from there.

Thing is, they don't have to plan for every contingency in this case. Sure, there probably should be some characters that will swing to any of the SW genders, but the majority of the characters should be like the majority of people: one preference. Sure, some people may not like the fact that they can't have a SSR with Companion 1138, but if that companion is written well it should feel natural for them to rebuff a SSR attempt.

Bioware's previous games show it done right: most of the characters have a single preference with a rebuff against their non-preference. It's only a few that will swing any way from Sunday. TOR should have gone the same way from the beginning.

Oh, I definitely see the difference. But it doesn't mean that everything is A-OK. In particular, all the issues with "complexity" and "resources" are caused by a simple fact that they didn't initially allow SGR at all - as a matter of policy. So it's still fair to criticize the results of this policy, as they didn't change.

Xavin wrote:

That assumes it's something that needs to be "balanced out", which it most certainly is not. That would be like going back and rewriting old books to include gay characters when there were none before, it's ridiculous.

It's only as "ridiculous" as the update itself - they are, indeed, going back and adding things to an old game.

Quote:

If from the beginning, some of the characters had been gay then I would have no problem with that, but you can't just change the story mid-stream to fit a political agenda.

It's only as "ridiculous" as the update itself - they are, indeed, going back and adding things to an old game.

It's an expansion to an MMO, a new planet and level cap. If you have ever played a Bioware game, imagine that, then tack on more at the end. That's nothing like going back and rewriting the rest of the game.

Quote:

A political agenda? Seriously?

What else do you call incessant cries to put SGRs into a game that barely has any romance at all? Despite all the other real, gameplay impacting issues that needed to be addressed first? I'm not completely dismissing the concerns, but the lack of SGR gets a lot more attention than it deserves. Articles with inflammatory and misleading headlines like this certainly don't help things either. You can't use politically charged words like "segregate" without making it political.

What's sad about this is in playing an Imperial Agent, at least one of my companions is openly bisexual. Just not with a female Agent, apparently.

And there is nothing gender-specific in the romance conversations, so no new voice acting would be needed to enable same-sex relationships for that character.

I haven't played the other characters recently, but I don't recall the romance conversations with my Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular or Smuggler being gender-specific either. The companions refer to me as "Agent", "Jedi", "you", etc.

But it certainly may feel like segregation if you're gay - as there's only one planet with gay relationships, and other planets are, indeed, straight-only.

Your character is not you. They have a past before you started "playing" them, they speak in their own voice, and while you nudge them in a direction, they speak their own words, not the ones you chose. On top of that, it's a SW game about a galactic war, not a dating simulator. They could drop all the romance elements out of the game completely and it would lose maybe 10 minutes of content per class (if that), out of many, many hours.

Admittedly, you do get some random mails from the romanced character after going through the romance story line that fleshes out more of the story.

It's an expansion to an MMO, a new planet and level cap. If you have ever played a Bioware game, imagine that, then tack on more at the end.

Writers usually don't do even this to books - which you used as an example. So what's "ridiculous" is for you to pretend that MMOs have the same kind of finality as books.

Quote:

What else do you call incessant cries to put SGRs into a game that barely has any romance at all?

Common sense and rejection of bigotry. It's a basic fact that some people are gay and , aside from anti-gay bigotry, it's not at all difficult to reflect this fact in a game - if the developer actually bothers with romance.

Quote:

You can't use politically charged words like "segregate" without making it political.

So do you think that people who were fighting segregation did it to " fit a political agenda"?

How easy or hard it is to make a game Mac-compatible depends on a lot of things, especially the game engine. Your statement about it being (by the sound of how you phrased it) essentially the same thing as a wrapper for a video file is ignorant. BioWare has never used the Hero engine before. Regardless of what was done in the past, you can't expect all popular titles to be available on Mac. See my previous minivan comparison. In regards to Marathon being a precursor to Halo; sure, but there's no Marathon without Wolfenstein 3D, Hexen, and Doom. Stop trying to make Macs out to be some O.G. gaming platform.

Who was saying it was an OG gaming platform? I gave a good solid example of the precursor to one of the most popular games of the last 20 years as having been a Mac only title. There are plenty of publishers who believe in publishing for both OSes. I'm merely pointing out that it isn't like the only games available on a Mac are Solitaire and Go. Torchlight, all the Civ series, Torchlight II (at some point), of course I already mentioned WoW, Starcraft and the Diablo series. Plenty of publishers make this work.

Another example, iTunes isn't a native app for Windows, it is the Mac software w/a wrapper around it. I never said wrapper around a video file. Seems like someone isn't paying attention. A game engine by it's nature is a separate environment that hooks into the OS. So you make the right system calls and the right things happen.

I always pursued the romance option in the Mass Effect triology and Dragon Age games, but I haven't even noticed the romance options (so far) in The Old Republic (I'm lvl 36 currently, playing a Jedi Consular). I've seen a couple of isolated NPCs that you can flirt with on the conversions, but I've yet to encounter them again in the game, so no romance comes about.

IME, the romance options aren't that big of deal to begin with in the game, as opposed to ME or DA. If I hadn't read this article, not sure I'd even have noticed any new options with the upcoming patch. Maybe more options open up as your near lvl 50 or play a different class. *shrug*

They're F2F now and have let some people go. It shouldn't be a surprise that they don't put more manpower of raising the number of gay characters. As someone pointed out, making everyone bi re-enforces the "it's a choice" mentality. Gay folks are a minority anyway, so making everything bang-able is kind of silly.

Making Bioware out to be anti-gay or something is totally ridiculous. Bioware clearly doesn't care what ports people put their dongles into if you look at their other titles. Making this into a Big Deal is just sensational. What, is Ars owned by FOX now?

Another example, iTunes isn't a native app for Windows, it is the Mac software w/a wrapper around it. I never said wrapper around a video file. Seems like someone isn't paying attention. A game engine by it's nature is a separate environment that hooks into the OS. So you make the right system calls and the right things happen.

iTunes on Windows isn't the Mac version with a wrapper.

Some Mac games have been the Windows versions with wrappers (Cider). They've run like crap. Better no Mac version of TOR than one of those.

How did we come to a point that game makers are actually apologising for failing to include an adequate amount of romance in a Star Wars RPG? Neither Star Wars or RPGs as a genre have anything to do with torrid romances. If you're going to put anything in at all keep it to a subtle allusion.

The other thing that occurs is that from what I've heard the Old Republic has some really serious issues with the engine and game structure. To waste time not only on romance in an RPG, but on same sex romance which will only be relevant to something around 3% of the population seems like a massive waste of resources. Bioware has long been known for it's terrible story and writing quality, and they really should put some of that effort into improving on their weaknesses.

Of course I may simply be a bit bitter because I had been looking forward to the Old Republic, and would quite like to see it being worth a play through one day.

How did we come to a point that game makers are actually apologising for failing to include an adequate amount of romance in a Star Wars RPG? Neither Star Wars or RPGs as a genre have anything to do with torrid romances. If you're going to put anything in at all keep it to a subtle allusion.

The other thing that occurs is that from what I've heard the Old Republic has some really serious issues with the engine and game structure. To waste time not only on romance in an RPG, but on same sex romance which will only be relevant to something around 3% of the population seems like a massive waste of resources. Bioware has long been known for it's terrible story and writing quality, and they really should put some of that effort into improving on their weaknesses.

Of course I may simply be a bit bitter because I had been looking forward to the Old Republic, and would quite like to see it being worth a play through one day.

I would wager that its relevant to more than 3%. The largest group pining for SGR imo isnt homosexuals, as they make up a fraction of the population. Its heterosexual males playing female characters wanting their characters to be in romantic relationships with their female NPC "pets"(companions) . I wouldnt be surprised if that was 80+% of the population.

How did we come to a point that game makers are actually apologising for failing to include an adequate amount of romance in a Star Wars RPG? Neither Star Wars or RPGs as a genre have anything to do with torrid romances. If you're going to put anything in at all keep it to a subtle allusion.

The other thing that occurs is that from what I've heard the Old Republic has some really serious issues with the engine and game structure. To waste time not only on romance in an RPG, but on same sex romance which will only be relevant to something around 3% of the population seems like a massive waste of resources. Bioware has long been known for it's terrible story and writing quality, and they really should put some of that effort into improving on their weaknesses.

Of course I may simply be a bit bitter because I had been looking forward to the Old Republic, and would quite like to see it being worth a play through one day.

I would wager that its relevant to more than 3%. The largest group pining for SGR imo isnt homosexuals, as they make up a fraction of the population. Its heterosexual males playing female characters wanting their characters to be in romantic relationships with their female NPC "pets"(companions) . I wouldnt be surprised if that was 80+% of the population.

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of. I never do roleplay as a female, since I can't get into the character.

Though if that's what they're looking for I'd suggest that they'd probably be much better off looking at any one of the septillion dating sims that have come out in the last 20 years. A quick google search shows it's a huge and thriving genre. If that's what you want looking for it in a Star Wars RPG seems a bit misplaced.

How did we come to a point that game makers are actually apologising for failing to include an adequate amount of romance in a Star Wars RPG? Neither Star Wars or RPGs as a genre have anything to do with torrid romances. If you're going to put anything in at all keep it to a subtle allusion.

The other thing that occurs is that from what I've heard the Old Republic has some really serious issues with the engine and game structure. To waste time not only on romance in an RPG, but on same sex romance which will only be relevant to something around 3% of the population seems like a massive waste of resources. Bioware has long been known for it's terrible story and writing quality, and they really should put some of that effort into improving on their weaknesses.

Of course I may simply be a bit bitter because I had been looking forward to the Old Republic, and would quite like to see it being worth a play through one day.

I would wager that its relevant to more than 3%. The largest group pining for SGR imo isnt homosexuals, as they make up a fraction of the population. Its heterosexual males playing female characters wanting their characters to be in romantic relationships with their female NPC "pets"(companions) . I wouldnt be surprised if that was 80+% of the population.

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of. I never do roleplay as a female, since I can't get into the character.

Though if that's what they're looking for I'd suggest that they'd probably be much better off looking at any one of the septillion dating sims that have come out in the last 20 years. A quick google search shows it's a huge and thriving genre. If that's what you want looking for it in a Star Wars RPG seems a bit misplaced.

While I agree with you, I think its more what Bioware fans are looking for in a Bioware game since romance arcs seem to be a Bioware staple, plus the male playing female staple of the MMORPG genre.

How did we come to a point that game makers are actually apologising for failing to include an adequate amount of romance in a Star Wars RPG? Neither Star Wars or RPGs as a genre have anything to do with torrid romances. If you're going to put anything in at all keep it to a subtle allusion.

The other thing that occurs is that from what I've heard the Old Republic has some really serious issues with the engine and game structure. To waste time not only on romance in an RPG, but on same sex romance which will only be relevant to something around 3% of the population seems like a massive waste of resources. Bioware has long been known for it's terrible story and writing quality, and they really should put some of that effort into improving on their weaknesses.

Of course I may simply be a bit bitter because I had been looking forward to the Old Republic, and would quite like to see it being worth a play through one day.

Terrible story and writing quality? Compared to what? Blizzard's one-dimensional crap? Their stories were written by people that clapped when Dubya coined the phrase "Axis of Evil". Bioware's stuff might not be perfect, but it's head and shoulders above a lot of material out there. Of course it's not up to the standard of some of its roots (Black Isle Games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment) but very little is.

Compared to other Bioware games, the romance options in ToR were quite lacking to begin with. I wouldnt think adding the benders to the cardboard cutout voice trees would be that difficult in ToR. Not like in Mass Effect...

"STEEEEVE!" as the gay flight dude crashes will always be burned into my mind.